Drug Therapy of Hypertension

Abstract

During the past 10 years many different drugs with direct and indirect actions upon the sympathetic nervous system have been used for the treatment of diastolic hypertension. Some of these drugs produce a central depressant effect on the hypothalamus with a secondary inhibition of the medullary vasomotor center; others exert their action at peripheral sites by blocking the release of levarterenol or depressing the neuroeffector site within the arteriolar walls. A third group of drugs exert their antihypertensive effect by depressing the autonomic ganglia. It now appears that the use of ganglion-blocking agents in combination with central depressant drugs and diuretics is the most effective method of blood pressure reduction in patients with moderate and severe diastolic blood pressure elevation. The first available ganglion-blocking agent for the treatment of hypertension was tetraethyl ammonium^1-4; subsequently a variety of other ganglioplegic drugs were introduced.^5-35All of these compounds produce their